Tuesday, December 22, 2009

"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama said. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill."

“I didn’t campaign on the public option,” President Obama told the Washington Post. But he touted the public option on his campaign website and spoke frequently in support of it during the first year of his presidency, citing its essential value in holding the private insurance industry accountable and providing competition:

– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]
– During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]
– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]
– During a conference call with progressive bloggers, the President said he continues “to believe that a robust public option would be the best way to go.” [7/20/09]
– Obama told NBC’s David Gregory that a public option “should be a part of this [health care bill],” while rebuking claims that the plan was “dead.” [9/20/09]

Despite all this overt advocacy for the public option, it appears that Obama was reticent to apply the political pressure necessary to get the plan in the final hours of congressional negotiation. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — who threatened to filibuster the creation of any new public plan or expansion of Medicare — told the Huffington Post that he “didn’t really have direct input from the White House” on the public option and was never specifically asked to support it.

What, you think we weren't paying attention or something when you mentioned the public option? I was. Don't pretend now that you didn't advocate it at all. You danced around it and you played semantics games, but you advocated it.

This is a case of the Left understanding -- for its own reasons -- why the Senate bill is a monstrosity. As I mentioned the other day, at least the left-wing has some principles, even if I disagree with those principles. The right-wing and vast center-right have principles, with which I agree.

The only people without principles are the Democrats in the Congress who are cutting backroom deals in an unseemly, secretive process in which legislators have been legally bribed for their votes with our money.

Really, this is some quality concern-trolling we're seeing here. I understand why Jane says this bill has to die. I don't agree with her, but I respect her sticking with her guns. Colonel Mustard here on the other hand is completely using Jane's good points to reinforce his bad ones...because if this bill actually did all that Jane wanted it to, Mustard would be throwing a fit.

Hell, I wish the bill had everything Jane was demanding. Mustard seems to think this is the Winger equivalent of LGF going lefty on us. I hate to disappoint him, but...

The latest PPP numbers from Kentucky shows Rand Paul has opened up a big 19 point lead in the primary over Trey Grayson, while on the Dem side Jack Conway has a 4 point lead over Dan Mongiardo.

Paul is up 44-25 on Grayson. 39% of likely primary voters have a favorable opinion of
him to 13% unfavorable while 22% view Grayson positively to 15% unfavorable.

Paul is winning the votes of conservatives by a 47-20 margin, while Grayson holds a 36-
34 lead with moderates. Paul is having a particularly good amount of success with folks
who think that the Republican Party in Washington has become too liberal- his lead with
them is 54-18. Paul’s support is universal across demographic lines, as he is up with
men, women, voters in every region of the state, and every group of the GOP electorate
broken down by age.

On the Democratic side Jack Conway holds a 37-33 lead over Dan Mongiardo, despite
the fact that he is considerably less well known. 27% of primary voters have a favorable
opinion of Conway to 15% unfavorable while the numbers break down 40% positive and
27% negative for Mongiardo. Conway is holding the slight lead due to the combined
support of people who like him and dislike Mongiardo.

“It’s going to be harder and harder for the political establishment to ignore Rand Paul if
he’s posting these kinds of numbers,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy
Polling. “He has a real shot at winning the Republican nomination.”

Oh goody. Because Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell aren't already turning the phrase "Kentucky Senator" into an instant laugh riot at parties, now the GOP may very well be putting Rand Paul and his race-baiting baggage up in November.

The latest PPP poll of MN-6 shows that most of Shelly Bachmann's constituents are happy with her extremist views, teabaggery, birther flirting and cries that the Obama administration is putting America on the path to socialism.

Bachmann's approval rating is 53%, with 41% disapproval. She leads both of her Democratic opponents by substantial margins, ahead of state Sen. Tarryl Clark by 55%-37%, and leading former University of Minnesota regent Maureen Reed by 53%-37%. The pollster notes that the challengers have low name recognition, but the points stands that a well-known incumbent is over the 50-percent mark.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

Oops. So she's vehemently against socialism, subsidies, welfare and government pork unless it has benefited her family directly...and continues to do so.

Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.

Alabama Blue Dog Rep. Parker Griffith is joining the GOP. As Ezra reminds us, he was a Republican anyway:

In substantive terms, I'm not particularly surprised that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, is joining the Republicans. Barack Obama got 37 percent in Griffith's district, and Griffith himself voted against the budget, the stimulus, cap and trade, financial regulation, heath-care reform, and talked about voting against making Nancy Pelosi speaker. When you've got a guy from a Republican district who votes like a Republican when people are watching and is facing an election where Republicans are likely to win back marginal seats, it's not that difficult to predict what's about to happen.

And yes, it looks bad. Frankly, that just means the Dems can run a non-Blue Dog Dem to try to defeat the guy. But you can't blame him for switching any more than you can Sen. Arlen Specter from going from R to D.

Les Phillip, one of the Republicans who was already in the race against Rep. Parker Griffith (R-Ala.) before he switched parties today, confirmed to TWI that he’s going to stay in the race. Earlier today, Mo Brooks — seen as the GOP’s front-runner until today — also said he was staying in.

“I welcome him to the correct party and I wish him well, and I’m staying in the race,” Phillip told TWI. “I’m glad he saw the light, after almost 70 years of life.”

Phillip also told TWI that Republican voters, given the chance to examine Griffith, had serious reasons to doubt his sincerity.

“The question is the same question you ask in a court case,” said Phillip. “When someone lied before, and now says he’s telling the truth, well: Was he lying then, or is he lying now?”

Congrats Parker. You've joined the GOP! Your first order of business, getting primaried out of the race by the Teabaggers!

What, you didn't think they were going to call you a RINO and vow to bury you? Are you really that stupid?

They want you gone. You're a filthy liberal as far as your new friends are concerned. And they are going to end you.

At the same time, Democrats say the apparently unbridgeable health care divide has convinced them that Republicans are dedicated solely to blocking legislative proposals for political purposes. Several said they now realized that they would have to rely strictly on their own caucus to advance such defining issues as climate change in 2010.

“We have crossed the mark of over 100 filibusters and acts of procedural obstruction in less than one year,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said on the floor Sunday. “Never since the founding of the Republic, not even in the bitter sentiments preceding Civil War, was such a thing ever seen in this body.”

Think about that.

One hundred plus filibusters and threatened filibusters by the Republicans. The Senate is not broken. The Republican party is.

Senate Republicans warned Monday that the bruising fight over health care reform could deliver a knockout blow to another Democratic priority: passage of a climate change bill in 2010.

With a united Democratic Caucus, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was able to get to cloture on health care without a single GOP vote. But Democrats aren’t united on climate change, and the bitter battle over health care has left even sympathetic Republicans with little desire to help — a dynamic that would likely doom the bill to legislative failure.

“It makes it hard to do anything because of the way this was handled,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Graham didn’t elaborate, but he didn’t have to — the fierce partisan fights during the past few weeks have torn away at the Senate’s clubby decorum, raising temperatures, fraying nerves and creating what one Democratic senator has called a “very high” level of distrust among members.

Graham’s words carry serious weight with supporters of climate change legislation because the South Carolina Republican has emerged as a leader on the issue in the Senate, working with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on a bipartisan bill.

“Right now, I would say that cap and trade is stalled,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

“Cap and trade has been delayed by the health care debate almost indefinitely,” said Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar.

“The question will be how many more battles members of Congress want to take on in an election year.”

“I give it a very low chance,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a potential GOP target for bill supporters.

“What it comes down to is our ability to work together as a body. And right now, the indicators are not very positive for climate change.”

Republicans aren't interested in debating anything on Obama's agenda. They don't think it should even be brought up for a vote. Doing work is pointless to the GOP as long as Obama's President. They'd rather just stall out the clock until 2012. They have no ideas of their own...not a single one...and even if they did, they will withhold those ideas out of spite just to prevent a Democratic Congress and President from claiming any credit for them.

John Bolton writing a piece for Human Events on "Dick Cheney: Conservative of the Year" is equivalent to Cobra Commander writing a piece for Supervillain Monthly on "The Penguin: World Dominator of the Year."

Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment requires that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The good news is that this only applies to one section of the Obamacare legislation. The bad news is that it applies to regulations imposed on doctors and patients by the Independent Medicare Advisory Boards a/k/a the Death Panels.

They're going completely nuts. Me, I'd like the opinion of folks who aren't still buying the death panels lie. Thanks.

They are invoking the Declaration of Independence and calling for an insurrection because the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the decisions of the Medicare Advisory Board (whose mission was expanded by the Senate health care bill) can be exempt from repeal or amendment. In other words, to protect the independence and integrity of the Medicare oversight board, the legislation requires a true supermajority of 67 senators to overrule their decisions. But Reid put this bill through at the 60-vote threshold. So, in effect, Red State is arguing that Reid has changed the rules of the Senate even though changing the rules of the Senate normally requires 67 votes, too. The parliamentarian disagrees with this logic, but that's really beside the point. Giving the Medicare Advisory Board (better known as 'Death Panels') some freedom from political influence is reason to "dissolve the political bands" to the federal government and start a guerrilla war? That's just funny.

Yep. Wingers. Still not smart enough to read. Te recap, the 67 vote super-majority is for overruling the Medicare Advisory Board. Reid is deferring to that with this bill instead of the 60 this bill would pass cloture with.

I'm not a scientist, but it seems clear to me that there is something dirty about the Large Hardon Collider project, and that it's the taxpayer who is really getting the shaft. We need lots of bloggers to grab tight hold on this issue: we must insistently compel these "scientists," who are just the willing tools of socialist politicians, to release their code, and their hard, raw, and -- crucially -- uncut data, even if it makes them shudder and scream to do so. Otherwise these insufferably cocky "scientists" will keep giving us the reacharound, I mean, runaround.

"As President Barack Obama's numbers on health care have declined so has his margin over Republicans on whom American voters trust most on the issue," said Peter Brown, Assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "In July he enjoyed a 20-point edge on the trust question, and that margin has been narrowing, to 45 - 40 percent today."

While voters oppose the health care plan, they back two options cut from the Senate bill, supporting 56 - 38 percent giving people the option of coverage by a government health insurance plan and backing 64 - 30 percent allowing younger people to buy into Medicare.

On the timing of action of health care, 31 percent support the proposals "currently being considered" and want Congress and the President to take action now; 28 percent oppose those proposals but want action on the issue now, while 36 percent don't want action on the issue now.

"While the Senate leadership reportedly has the votes to pass a health care overhaul plan this week, outside the Beltway there appears to be weak support, both to what voters understand as the plan, and the need to pass that plan now," said Brown. "Although a small majority favors abortion rights, allowing the use of public money for the procedure under a national health care plan, which has been a matter of some dispute in both houses of Congress, is extremely unpopular."

By 73 - 18 percent, voters don't believe President Obama will be able to keep his promise to overhaul health care without increasing the federal deficit and by 56 - 37 percent they don't want the overhaul if it will increase the deficit.

So the two things that Americans did want were dropped.

Seems to me that's the two things you need to improve on this bill first, yes?

Business spending in the third quarter was weaker than the government had estimated last month. Business investment fell at a 5.9 percent rate instead of 4.1 percent, the department said.

A deeper than initially thought slump in the construction of nonresidential structures and stronger demand for imports, which overshadowed the growth in exports, held back growth in the third quarter, the report showed.

Nonresidential building activity dropped 18.4 percent in the third quarter rather than 15.1 percent, a reflection of the troubles in the commercial property market. That shaved 0.68 percentage points off GDP.

In other words, the CRE crash is really starting to hurt. And the only thing that kept the country in positive was the stimulus package, which Republicans insisted we don't need and never did.

The decision by Mr. Giuliani, 65, leaves Senator Gillibrand — who was appointed to her seat less than a year ago, has never run in a statewide election, and is still unfamiliar to many voters — without a high-profile Republican opponent as she faces election to the seat.

As recently as a week ago, a Quinnipiac University poll showed Mr. Giuliani leading Ms. Gillibrand in a hypothetical matchup, 50 percent to 40 percent.

Mr. Giuliani, whose decision to forgo a race for governor was reported a month ago, plans to endorse Rick Lazio for governor of New York on Tuesday afternoon at a news conference in Manhattan, the Republicans said. Mr. Giuliani’s intentions were reported by The Daily News on its Web site Monday evening.

Many Republican leaders, sensing anger at Albany and incumbent politicians in general, had seen the former mayor as the strongest potential candidate for governor or for Senate in 2010. But party officials had begun agitating for him to declare his intentions as to the Senate race.

Rudy, frankly, didn't have a chance. His weirdness would have blown the race for him, and Empire State voters would have seen that since 2002 he hasn't actually done anything.

If 2010 is such a great year for the GOP, and such a terrible year for incumbent Dems...why isn't Rudy running?

Cincinnati officials plugged the city’s $51 million budget hole for 2010 on Monday night without layoffs, union concessions or a trash collection fee.

The final version, discussed past 10 p.m., avoided the unpaid days that unions had been asked to take just hours before. It did include, however, an assumption that AFSCME will allow the city to delay a $2.5 million longevity pay lump-sum payment to the union to 2011.

It also relies on taking $8.2 million from the city’s working capital reserve fund and more than $23 million in one-time cuts, cuts that will not help the city with any financial problems past next year.

Something needs to be done about adding a revenue stream in the future, said Councilman Cecil Thomas, who added that he was ready to go home for Christmas.

“This does not represent something that we’re all happy about,” said Councilwoman Laketa Cole, chairwoman of the budget and finance committee. “But with leadership comes compromise.”

Councilman Chris Bortz called it “probably the most irresponsible budget we’ve ever passed in this city.”

Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz said: “I’m not saying yes to this piece of garbage.”

The budget ended up passing 5-4.

Among the cuts: 10 unpaid days for Mayor Mark Mallory, council members and their staffs, saving more than $46,000; office supplies, $400,000; and $3 million in overtime, most of which will come from the police department.

Restored: $75,000 for a poison-control hot line; $50,000 for the Greater Cincinnati Film Commission; $337,940 for nature education, which drew a lot of supporters to public budget hearings; and $362,000 in money for social-services agencies.

And therein lies the rub: the city's borrowing against next year and hoping the economy will improve around here in 2010. I only see it getting worse, giving the city even lower revenue from property taxes and making next year worse. A lot of local and state governments are going to be relying on the Obama administration passing some sort of jobs/mini-stimulus bill to get them through 2010. Barring that, a lot of layoffs are looming in state and local governments come January.

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With Republicans controlling the House and Senate and President Obama coming to the end of his second term in the White House, there's still plenty of Stupid to fight on all sides with a crumbling global economy imperiling the world, two seemingly endless wars, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day.

Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there still coming from both political parties, when we need solutions.

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